Avoiding Guilt Along The Fitness Journey

Whether you’ve started your fitness journey with a strict deadline or whether you hope to improve your health over time, you will monitor your progress closely. 

Understandably, the most significant factor of fitness success is achieving your goals. However, setting clear and realistic goals can be challenging for many new fitness enthusiasts. Unrealistic goals or lack of clarity can make you feel like you are not progressing despite your hard work. 

However, even with clearly defined and achievable goals, you may still face negative feelings regarding your progress and hard work. Fitness guilt is a frequent occurrence for both professional and amateur athletes. Guilt can be a highly destructive emotion that affects your routine, decisions, and even mental health. Unfortunately, guilt is often the result of harmful habits that can damage your self-esteem and sense of self-worth.

Your diet is too strict

If you start your fitness journey with the desire to shed fat, you will need to adjust your diet accordingly. Experts advise that weight loss is made in the kitchen more than in the gym. However, a strict diet focusing on cutting calories, sugar, and carbs could be counter-productive. Undereating or intentionally avoiding o nutrients can help lose weight rapidly. But you are more likely to experience intense cravings and eventually give in, which is where the guilt comes from. Ideally, you want a diet that gives you some freedom, such as letting you enjoy a sweet snack from time to time. You don’t need to bake a cake on your cheat day, but something simple such as this churros recipe can hit the sweet spot without putting your effort at risk.

You push yourself too much

Building muscle mass can help improve your health, your metabolism, your immune system, and your body composition. So, adding strength workouts to your fitness journey can be crucial to achieving your goals. However, it’s important to give your muscles plenty of recovery time. Muscles need to repair fibre tears to grow stronger. So, if you don’t rest enough, you may not feel the benefit of your training. Persistent soreness and weakness may drive guilt feeling. However, refrain from additional training. Instead, these may be a sign that you are training too much and that your body needs a break from the gym. Taking a day off will encourage muscle recovery and help with your mood. Too much training can lead to hormonal imbalance, which will affect your mood too!

You spend too much time comparing yourself to others

Your journey is unique. It’s tough to join the gym as a newcomer when surrounded by people who have been training for years. However, comparing your performance to theirs is unrealistic, inaccurate, and useless. It will only make you feel inadequate for all the wrong reasons. Every body builds strength and flexibility at its own pace. Perhaps, the person you admire for their muscle definition joined the gym as an unfit and overweight adult. You did not see their journey; therefore, you do not know where they stand compared to the day they started. Instead, focus on your path and the improvements you make along the way.

Guilt is a dark emotion that can cause stress and pressure. However, there should not be any room for guilt in your fitness journey. On the contrary, you should be proud of your achievements and commitment to becoming a stronger and healthier person.